I'm a fan of SnapzProX but needed more and bought iShowU...mainly for the instant rendering. When ScreenFlow came out, I was blown away and purchased it immediately since it gave me the ability to make a screencast into a production.

The ability to modify the cursor highlights and add video effects is huge. But being able to import media is incredibly useful (I often export a Keynote as a QT movie and import it for a short, few slide intro to a section in Screenflow).

Here's one "gotcha" for all users to be aware of: Though Screenflow *does* work on older hardware, I created a Screenflow on my Macbook Pro (Intel, of course) and wanted to finish it at home on my dual 2.5ghz G4 tower with my big cinema display. The kicker? The file isn't compatible from Intel to PPC or vice versa and it took a trouble ticket and a response from Screenflow support to learn that this Macintel/PPC machine-to-machine file use isn't supported.

This is a remarkable product for a 1.0 version and I'm expecting even more from the next release and have already convinced four others to buy it in the last month.

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For those interested in comparing screen capture software:

The ability to modify the cursor highlights is included in iShowU (for both left and right clicks). I've used that feature.

I know of no video effects in iShowU. iShowU lacks a video editing interface and that cool ability of SF to extract a window/dialog box as if it were on its own layer.

I have moved captured video from Intel to PPC machines and continued working without problems. I think this may be because the files iShowU exported used my choice of QT-compatible codecs.

On my Mac Pro, iShowU is stable and reliable, whereas ScreenFlow is not. SF crashes now & then.

Snapz Pro X 2 crashes often, too, usually at the worst time: it either crashes during export (losing all your work, forcing a reshoot), or it exports a file that won't open in QuickTime. Since the export takes so long, that's a very bad time to discover that Snapz has failed.

Anyone's experience may vary; this has been mine. I used Snapz a lot, till iShowU, then iShowU often. I've only used the demo version of SF. It's too expensive for my needs, because I already have 2 or 3 video editors: QT Pro, iMovie, and Final Cut Studio. For those who lack an editing program, SF may be a better choice.

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